Her husband frowned, groping for her. She guided his hand, and he woke as he found her. “Dalat,” he whispered, eyes unfocused. He licked his lips, blew a long breath, and rolled his shoulders, all with his hand gripping her waist.
“Dawn is here.” Her voice wavered.
“What is…” The king sat up swiftly. “Morning. Gaela’s birthday! My love—Dalat. You’re alive.”
Her smile was tired. Dalat felt heavy, her limbs slow as cold honey. “I love you,” she said.
Gaelan gathered her against him, eager to push their bodies together. “I love you, more than everything.”
“Hold me… tightly.”
He obeyed, and stroked her braids, his mouth at her ear as he said, “I have thought, over long nights, that if you did not die, if your heart still beat this morning, if your spirit was as glorious as ever, we should rename you only my wife, and make Gaela our queen. She could be ready now, to make the bargain. That would fulfill the prophecy well enough for all the stars. A new queen, reborn, and crowned with her own name, her own glory. The old queen’s death symbolic. And it ties neatly with star and moon cycles of death and rebirth.”
The king leaned back, smiling proudly, triumphantly, until he saw the tears in Dalat’s eyes. The slackening of her mouth. “Dalat?” he whispered.
“You did not tell me any of that. You… wouldn’t talk to me,” his queen managed. Her chest hurt. And her stomach. “I asked you, and I asked you, in so many ways this year, to…”
“What? This? I did not—could not risk changing anything with words!” Gaelan curled his long fingers around her bare shoulders. Her head lolled, but with a great strength of will Dalat lifted it again.
“My heart was strong enough,” she whispered, horrified, so very heavy now, and scared. “I only die because I thought there was no other way. For my—us.”I thought you would never bend. I thought… my daughters would be torn to pieces by Connley and—and Glenna—Glenn—and…
“No, you aren’t dying. You’re here, with me. What is wrong?” Gaelanshook her, then released her shoulders to grasp her head. The queen’s arms flopped against the bed.
“I thought you were too afraid to lose me, or else lose your stars. I thought you would never make a plan in case they failed.” Was she saying it all out loud, or only trying to? Dalat could barely tell. But Gaelan’s face contorted as if he could hear her. “So I made a plan on my own,” she said.
This time when her head dipped back, Dalat could not lift it.
“No!” the king cried, laying her down. He bent over his wife. He slapped her; when her head turned from the force it did not turn back.
Her eyes drifted shut. His frantic, beloved voice faded in and out as he argued with her, as he demanded to know what she’d done. His lips on her mouth, her face, his wet lashes brushed her cheek. The damp kiss of tears. Or gentle rain. Or
ELIA
THE NIGHT CAMEto its end when the roots of the Thorn Tree vanished under the western horizon, while its branches still stretched toward the seven constellations that in this hour of this month were known as the Mantle.
Five hawthorns huddled in a line down the lee of the rocky slope, protected from the harshest sea winds. The trees had given Scagtiernamm its Learish name:Refuge of Thorns.It was a portentous place and time for a star reading, in the Refuge of Thorns, beneath a sinking Thorn Tree constellation, before the Salmon nosed up or the Star of Fourth Birds burst visible as a trailhead for the following sun.
Elia trudged up the moorland alone.
As she walked, she asked the world,Why is there no language of stars?
The wind shivered her eyelashes.What do you think your charts and numbers have been?asked the nearest hawthorn tree in a creaking, hissing old voice.
The stars speak a silent language,she murmured.
Yes.
Do they care about us here?
Neither the wind nor the roots replied.
“Why should they care?” asked Ban Errigal.
It seemed she was not the first to arrive.
He stood in the line of hawthorns, fully armored in leather and mail, with a faded gambeson and a sword in his belt that babbled a stream of words Elia did not quite understand.
There’d been a fire beside his feet recently; a thin trickle of smoke rose still. Two fingers on his right hand were blackened by char. Elia smelled blood—a sharp complement to the salty wind.
